Total Treasury debt reached 903.3 billion dirhams (MMDH) at the end of May 2022, up 2.1% compared to the end of 2021, according to the Treasury and External Finance Department (DTFE).
The structure of this debt remains dominated by its domestic component with a share of 77%, while the external debt represents 23% of the total outstanding debt, specifies the DTFE in a recent note on the situation.
The said note also indicates that the situation of external Treasury borrowings generated a negative net flow (drawings – amortizations) of 900 million dirhams (MDH) at the end of May 2022 against +3.7 billion dirhams during the same period a year earlier. In this evolution, the prints stood at 3.5 billion dirhams, down -56.3%.
For their part, repayments in principal recorded an increase of 2.3% to 4.4 billion dirhams. Thus, the stock of the Treasury’s external debt stood at 207.6 billion dirhams, up by nearly 1.9% compared to the end of December 2021.
The DTFE also indicates that the upward trend in the evolution of the rates applied to the primary market of Treasury Bonds (BDT) that began at the start of 2022 continued during the month of May. This increase concerned 5-year BDTs, which experienced the strongest increase with +36 basis points (bps) at 2.32%, followed by 52-week BDTs (+26 bps /1.76%), BDTs at 2 years (+25 bps /1.93%), BDTs at 26 weeks (+22 bps /1.64%) and BDTs at 13 weeks (+19 bps /1.51%).
In terms of active management of domestic debt and with a view to readjusting its profile, the Treasury carried out bond exchange operations for a total amount of 8.6 billion dirhams at the end of May 2022, notes the same source, noting that at the end of the first five months of 2022, the average duration of the domestic debt remained at the same level as at the end of 2021, i.e. 6 years and 4 months.